Once upon a time

I miss innocence.

I miss the times when I accepted what happened in a novel just because it happened. I miss the 'okay, let's go with that new plot development' attitude I used to have.

I miss the time before I began to see the way writers structured a tv show or a book series, and I could get fully outraged over a plot development, having no idea about what was going to happen. Nowadays, I can tell you the three most likely options for the way the latest stunning climax will be resolved. I can tell you about how real life will probably dictate what happens next in a show with a vulnerable actor or awful producers. I can figure out how this latest development relates to the arc as a whole.

I can guess which guy the girl will end up with because of the pattern of the story that's gone before. I can catch the hints that mean the thing I'm hoping for is never going to happen.

I can get mad at abuses of technique that I never used to notice because I didn't know they existed.

Gone are the days when I'm purely carried along by the story. Oh, those moments are still there, don't get me wrong--but they're always tainted by the way I now know that the author is a fallible person. Just because they got published, doesn't mean they always know how to write a story in the best way.

The mystery's kind of gone.

Maybe it's because of the internet opening my eyes to fans who didn't take things lying down, actively protesting against something like Andrew Lloyd Webber's Love Never Dies.

Maybe it's because now that I've begun to seriously learn about how to write, and write well, that I notice these things. I notice what I should and shouldn't be doing. I muse on what I would have done instead, or how I would resolve the situation if I were writing it.

Or maybe it's simply an overdose of TV Tropes.

Whatever. Now I live in a land of doomed but hardy Penny/Sheldon shippers and once-beloved stories that don't quite make the grade anymore.

I may have begun to realise that I can have my own opinions on a character's fate; I may have begun to critically think about literature; I may have a better understanding and control over developments in my stories--but with the coming of all these things, cynicism has set in.

Damn it.